LO Community ex Vanilla and user expectations, impact and other points.

[Alexander Thurgood <alex.thurgood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Apologies if this has already been debated somewhere and I've missed it
(probably), but I have just received an update for LO Vanilla through
the Apple AppStore, and I noticed that the StartCenter now carries a
banner/sticker inscribed "LibreOffice Community" in the bottom lefthand
corner, which is an active link pointing to

https://www.libreoffice.org/)

As a QA triager, I am somewhat confused as to the message being sent out
here.

As we know, the "community" version provided by Collabora doesn't have
the same functionality as the TDF download (e.g. no Java support,
therefore no hsqldb support, no reportbuilder, etc).

However, this version now points directly to the LibreOffice website,
and I feel that user expectations are being somewhat misled, due to the
missing functionality.

Users who click on the link will land on the LibreOffice landing page
and look for help (e.g. Ask, or the documentation section) where they
will see that Java functionality is supposed to be supported, and my
concern is that once a user realizes that a deliberate confusion has
been entertained, it will probably be too late.

The user in question will by now almost certainly have dismissed LO as
not up to scratch, and will probably fail to understand why they should
now go and install a different app with a confusingly similar name, and
unauthenticated to boot, outside of the AppStore.

My takeaway from this confusion is unfortunately all rather negative,
and ultimately my concern is that the confusion will lead to the "by
default" replacement of desktop LO on the Mac by "LO Vanilla/Community"
with ensuing loss of functionality, driven by one actor of the LO
community in its broadest sense, and which the LO project will have at
worst underwritten, at best implictly condoned.

I also feel somewhat uncomfortable with providing help for a product
that maintains this duplicity.

Unfortunately, I don't really have any better suggestions on how to
manage this, but for me, willingly confusing users is not the way forward.

I am as yet undecided on whether I would wish to maintain my
contribution to the project in the current environment. Clearly, I have
some thinking still to do in that regard.


Alex



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